Dave Pillow

The one and only Neigh Horse

Last night, wishing to spare our neighbours from the yowling and comfort our seemingly scared but actually sly, beloved tiny tyrant, we let the baby into our bed at 2 am, where he proceeded to squirm and flail, hitting each parent in the face. He insisted on going to the bathroom. He amused himself at length by tickling his ticklish father. He requisitioned my pillow, and named it "Dave". Why Dave? I have no idea. Sadly, Dave was not needed for sleeping, but in order to examine his pocket (i.e. the pillow case). Also, we were offered a running commentary on his all too audible flattulance. BIG toot! I'm hopeful tonight will be less eventful, though he asked for Dave Pillow before bed.

I've been meaning to tell you all about how he learns language, but this anecdote sort of tells you why my blogging has decreased. Some days you just drink coffee until you are able to make it to nap or bedtime.

He's quite the little talker. He's been learning to speak over the last year. At his last appointment with the pediatrician they forgot to ask me to fill in a survey about development. The doctor said she really wasn't worried; they wanted to know if your two year old could string together three words and Gabriel had not ceased talking since she had arrived. I loved signs of extrapolation, when last summer, for instance, he would say things that were logical, but wrong, so he clearly had inferred words, rather than heard them (like "mans" insted of men). Now, I am particularly enjoying seeing him invent and name things. Many toys had utilitarian names, because his parents had to be able to identify and describe them (like Puppy, Monkey and Dinosaur). Lately though, he's named his own toys. A stuffed rabbit at his birthday was instantly Peter Rabbit. A Christmas monster is now Smelly Fred (after the Denis Lee poem). The rocking horse his father built him is Neigh Horse. Amazingly, a blue shark from blythechild was named Rocky Go Shark. But Dave Pillow is the first named, random, inanimate object. I didn't give it to him. You gotta draw the line somewhere. Dave is mine.

Reading is sexy XL

(image by Iker Ayestaran)

I'm not really feeling very well today. I have this threatening tickle in my throat and cotton wool in my brain, so instead of writing the @%&# report version 3.∞ I thought I'd catch up on some outstanding blogging. I realize I haven't mentioned any books read since July, and though I've been busy, that's just wrong. I started this post, in fact, July 31.

Next, I read the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster.

IF ANYONE WANTS TO READ THIS BOOK AS A SIMPLE MYSTERY NOVEL, THAT'S HIS BUSINESS. - Rudolfo Walsh

27. City of Glass by Paul Auster "It was a wrong number that started it," the mystery in which our protagonist Daniel Quinn finds himself. Quinn lives a life of relative leisure, easily publishing one detective novel under the pseudonym William Wilson, about gumshoe Max Work, every year. The rest of the time he is free to read, or roam the streets of New York city. His wife and son have died, and he lives a quiet, solitary existence. A series of telephone calls from a strange, somewhat mechanical voice, asking to speak with the detective 'Paul Auster' changes everything for him. Years of writing detective novels have made him intrigued about his own abilities to be a detective, and he eventually agrees to meet Peter Stillman, the man who is convinced he is 'Paul Auster' the best detective in town. It turns out that Peter Stillman has been the victim of a very strange experiment. His father was a theologist who wrote about the myth of Paradise and the myth of Babel. His thesis was about Milton's (apparent) secretary, Henry Dark, who allegedly conceived the idea that an infant, without the influence of people to teach it the languages humanity uses since the fall of the Tower of Babel, would naturally speak God's own tongue and be a link back to Paradise. So Stillman locked up his son Peter in isolation, in the dark, for 9 long years. There was a fire, which lead to Peter's release. Eventually the police, confronted with the barely-verbal young Peter deduce what his mad father has done, and the father is imprisoned. Peter spends years in a hospital, being rehabilitated, and eventually marries his nurse. Peter has called Quinn ('Paul Auster') because his father is being released from prison and he is terrified. 'Paul Auster' should tail Stillman senior and warn, Peter and his wife, if he intends Peter any harm. The wife, Virginia, has stepped straight out of a noir film. She is more care-giver than wife, and makes a pass at Quinn. Soon Quinn finds himself at Grand Central Station, awaiting Stillman senior, and then following his bizzare tramp-like life. Stillman lives in a rooming house-style hotel, and roams a certain set range of New York, on particular paths (which may have meaning) gathering innocuous things - urban debris. There is a wonderful interplay between levels of identity: Quinn as the author William Wilson, Quinn playing the role of Max Work, Quinn playing the role of 'Paul Auster' - and then one day, it occurs him to look in the phone book and call Paul Auster, whom he meets and learns is an author. Auster is writing an essay about Don Quixote (another D.Q.) and levels of meaning and identity, questions of who is the author and how this can be, and how can a person become the character in the sort of literature which obsesses them. This is an incredible book. On one level it is a detective story (though I felt compelled to look through my Paco Ignacio Taibo II novels to find the Walsh quotation above). It's also about the romance of New York, and literature, identity, meaning, loss, homelessness - and baseball, specifically the Mets. There's a real humanity here, as well as a love of history, literature and myth. It felt like Auster's New York has something in common with Haruki Murakami's Tokyo. The streets also have echos of the literary giants past who have made it their home. It's quite amazing to read something magic, and moving, with such a spectacular structure and so rich in allusions to literature.

28. Ghosts by Paul Auster It's the late 40's. Blue has learned the ropes of how to be a good detective from Brown, now retired. White hires Blue, over the phone, to trail a man named Black. He's rented the apartment across the street from Black, and supplied it with all Blue needs to surveil Black indefinitely - without explaining why. Blue accepts the easy, paying job. Blue calls his sweetheart and warns her he's going undercover, and moves into the apartment and begins the process of watching Black. The less Black does - and he does very little - the deeper Blue slips into obsession.

The entire novel is a sort of metaphor, as clarified by the third in the trilogy.

29. The Locked Room by Paul Auster A "locked room" mystery is usually a classic sort of murder mystery in which a body is found in a locked room (think Poe, Christie or Conan Doyle, why yes, I did take a course in Detective Fiction, why do you ask?), but in this case, and in this context, it is, of course, about a book, or several. Our unnamed protagonist, a writer and critic, receives a letter from a childhood friend named Fanshawe with whom he has lost touch. He soon learns that Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving a trove of unpublished novels, letters, and stories, and a young, beautiful wife and child. He is enlisted to help get the undiscovered literary genius Fanshawe published, but soon he falls into his role - husband and father in his small family. Despite some unresolved jealously of Fanshawe, and the reality of being suspected of being Fanshawe and merely pretending to be his childhood friend, life is good in a loving relationship and with a steady source of income from editing and publishing Fanshawe, until Fanshawe writes our protagonist a letter. Fanshawe is distinctly not dead, nor ignorant of our protagonist's new role, and in fact, appears to have orchestrated it all. Our protagonist is left fearful of confessing this to his wife, and feeling like a puppet. Our protagonist needs to hunt down Fanshawe.

Of the three, the first in the Trilogy is the most compelling, and the most able to stand on its own, but by the end of the third, the view of the over-arching structure of the entire trilogy is breath-taking.

{Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX}

Reading is sexy XXVII

(Image: Young Girl Reading by a Window by Delphin Enjolras) 34. Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt. Little Black Book indeed. A.S. Byatt writes fairytales for adults wherein sometimes the monster wins, and it may not be the one expected. The Thing in the Forest is a war-time story within a contemporary frame which revisits the British-style dragon, the worm, which appeared in The Djinn in the Nightengale's Eye. It is about alienation and guilt. Body Art is an amazingly visual story, combining some of my favorite things (art, art history, history of science and cabinets of curiosity) with rounded characters and ethical dilemma. The Stone Woman is a wonderful story of geology and the modern-day, accidental, Nordic troll. Raw Material is a very dark story about writer's block - the violence is just beneath the surface. I am certain that no author before or since has ever made the Teletubbies quite so creepy, or combined them with Greek mythology, as in The Pink Ribbon. These stories appeal to our primordial pleasure in being scared just enough. Byatt has a lot of control and the confidence and insight to take the reader to the edge. Read this book. 35. The Man Game by Lee Henderson. The violence below the surface in the Black Book is let loose in the astonishing Man Game. This book won the BC Book Prize. Despite a contemporary narrator, it is mostly set in 1886 - 1887 in Vancouver, but this is no reverential historical fiction. It is more like Fight Club meets the wild west, but it is a true novel of the Canadian west, with more lumberjacks, Chinese immigrants, drug abuse, labour unrest and fewer cowboys. Beautiful newly-wed Molly Erwagen arrives in town with her recently paralyzed husband Samuel and native ward Toronto (honestly), just in time to witness a great fire which destroys most of the city. Two lumberjacks Litz and Pisk are blamed for the fire. It doesn't take Molly long to invent a profit-making diversion in the male-dominated Vancouver, combining dance, acrobatics, vaudeville and martial arts - the Man Game is a game of skill, fought in the nude (to avoid dirty tricks), illustrated in the book by a series of line drawing for the various moves. The cast of characters includes entrepreneurial opium-adicts, bookies, Chinese bakers, lumberjacks, the po-lice, snakeheads from San Francisco, a Mexican barman with a portable bar, a Bermudan barman, a cowboy "shit-disturber" (pro-labour xenophobe), the madam and the Whore Without a Face. The language is rough and tumble and full of Chinook, a dialect which allowed the major ethnic groups (miscellaneous Europeans, Chinese, Chinookan, Nootka, Salish, Haida, Siwash, Snauq, Sto:lo, Tlingit and other Native peoples) to communicate. A women is a mink or ee-na, and it takes little imagination to follow a discussion about her totooshes. Money is chickamin or blankets. The louts are bohunks, and they don't reckon, they kumtuks. I've spent enough time in BC to know what skookum means. Henderson obviously harbours a great love for Vancouver, but he keeps his eyes wide open. An overhead snipet of dialogue in the modern-day Vancouver man game left me howling with laughter ("So I teach yoga to get laid, but like, I also want to stay in shape"). He isn't scared to skewer sacred cows. Characters say "oot" and "aboot" throughout. The novel is a story of love, hatred, violence, art, men, women, cultural identity, family, labour and race relations. It is action packed. The societal issues facing 1887 Vancouver society may appear to have changed but at the core many of the issues simply appear in new guises. It calls out for a film adaptation (with built-in-product placement, what with all the Hudson's Bay blankets), except our society is afraid of male nudity. But, I love seeing this story set in Canada. I cannot believe it is Henderson's first novel. I've never read anything quite like it. I really think you'd enjoy it too, unless perhaps if you are from New Westminster. 36. Cake or Death by Heather Mallick. The problem with Heather Mallick is, in her own words, that she is "an appalling combination of socialist and snob". She shops at Holt Renfrew and wears pearls and has what I deem a perhaps overblown preoccupation with hygiene and cleanliness. However, she is often delightfully eccentric and self-deprecating. She cites Eddie Izzard for her title. She can be counted on to stand up for her convictions, and for that I admire her. She thanks Dr. Henry Morgentaler in the Acknowledgements. She calls out hypocracy when she sees it, isn't afraid of a fight and has a healthy, sarcastic and sometimes dark, ascerbic sense of humour. I recognize her descriptions of a stoic upbringing. I used to enjoy her column in the Globe and Mail before I gave up on seeing any decent newspaper published in this country. Mallick is never dull, but I wish this book were wittier. I think she is capable of it. The essay about "why Doris Lessing will never win a Nobel" was redundant before this book even had a chance to come out in soft cover. {Series so far: books read, more books read, books read, books read continues, more books read, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII}

Observations

Things which have amused me this morning:
that German research vessels specify their length to the centimeter! I have never seen any vessel length more accurate than the foot or the meter, but it fits precisely with my (facetiously held) idea of German-ness. There are certain running jokes amongst marine scientists about research vessels of various nationalities and how this reflects the character of the nation (American boats are dry - alcohol-free*, French boats have wine-holds and dancefloors, Japanese boats have communal baths and serve flying-fish sushi, should the misguided suckers land on the deck). The stereotype about the German R/V Sonne is that (say, unlike Canadian vessels where there are a series of skilled helmsmen who hold station with a combination of luck, skill and magic**) if they need to hold station to do some science, there is a large red button on the bridge, which is pushed by the authoritarian Captain, and through the magic of German engineering.... *poof* ...boat stops even in a gale.***

Things which have not amused me this morning:
Despite their claim that they would send out a serviceperson last night, we still have neither heat nor hot water. I haven't been able to bathe since Tuesday and thus have so far been working from home, not feeling like going to the office feeling slimy. At least it is only autumn. However a cold shower in a freezing apartment is not tempting.

Things which make me wonder:
I went and translated all the items in my shop, so that posting are in both official languages. I had a purchase earlier this week from someone with a French name in Québec, so I debated whether I should write back in French. I decided to send a standard (your loot is in the mail thank you so much) email in English and a brief thank you in French with the item. Today I have a purchase from France. The funny thing is that I had just been wondering at my own sanity for having put all this effort into translating everything, since Google Analytics told me I had very few visits from people whose operating systems identify them as francophone.

*When I casually mentioned I had never previously been on a dry vessel, after a week long cruise on an American boat, the jaws of all the American scientists collectively dropped. Though Canadian vessels are stricter than they used to be; when I was a student, you could buy yourself a duty-free beer for 50 cents from a vending machine on a well-known research vessel. The crew used the proceeds to buy a hot tub. They are a clever bunch.
**In my experience, it is wise to go up to the wheelhouse, now an again, particularly at about 3 am, to give the Officer on the bridge a pep talk, and maybe a butter tart with a coffee. I tend to do experiments which require a lot of station-holding, which is not the sort of thing which is popular with Officers.
***I should make clear that I have never been aboard any German vessel. I have been on many many Canadian research cruises, a couple of American research cruises, and one month-long Chilean research cruise and I have toured a variety of research vessels when they've come to port. I can say that each of these did indeed have a distinct flavour.

Reading is sexy XVIII

(image: La Lettre by Henry Lerolle (Paris, 1848-1929) via Guarda chi legge)
14. Etcetera And Otherwise by Sean Stanley (Illustrations by Kristi-Ly Green). This little fantastical (he uses the term fabulist, a lot) book with surreal black and white illustrations (collage and painting incorporating vintage engravings in the surrealist tradition*) tells the tale of bookstore owner dubbed Otherwise who goes on a 28 day adventure with beautiful customer Etcetera. It is a bizarre sort of love story - like a relationship/cross-country road-trip related through the lens of the absurd. There are some dramatic images in this surreal world, and interesting characters. Each day (or chapter) begins with with a quotation from Errors in Composition by Duncan Robertson (which may or may not be a real book - I have not bothered to check). I liked parts of this book, which is what I get for choosing a book based on its design.

15. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker. I guess I had enough of nonsense and moved onto non-fiction. This book is excellent. Any concerns that it would be too dense to read in bits and pieces on the streetcar were alleviated by his clear, engaging and sporadically colloquial style. He investigates how we use language (in particularly, subtleties of grammar) and what this reveals about our primordial systems for categorizing the world as we know it. He is just as likely to allude to contemporary studies in psychology, ethnology or neurology as he is to allude to the Simpsons, comics, movies, or jokes, which makes this book fun to read. I learned a great deal about grammar, which was distinctly more interesting than that may sound. The discussion of Linguistic Determinism (the idea that our language limits thinkable thoughts) and why he thinks that is nonsense, is fascinating. (This reminded me of arguing with Mrs. McRae in grade 11, who claimed that in Nineteen-Eighty Four, the reduction in allowed language would prevent members of their society from thinking certain things. I thought this was a bias of a language-dominant brain in an English teacher. She scowled at me when I said that I do not think in words and that words were a meta- level of thought. When placed on the spot to explain how I could think anything other than words, I could only cite images and mathematics, which she dismissed, and a good portion of civilization as we know it, but she seemed bemused that I would argue with her.) I was surprised to learn that many high-profile philosophers subscribe to this idea, though it comes in and out of fashion. How we semantically break up the world around us, how we name things, what metaphors or lies tells us about the mind, and taboos and culture are all elucidated. The taboo chapter was particularly funny. I really recommend this book.
16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Back to fiction. This is an impressive first novel. It tells the tale of Amir, privileged son of a wealthy, demanding, but generous Pashtun father, in Kabul in the mid-seventies. His shadow is Hassan, son of their servant, a loyal and devoted friend, but as a Hazara, he will always be a second-class citizen in Afghanistan. The title comes from Hassan's skill in hunting down defeated kites as Amir's partner in massive kite battles (with strings covered in glass dust for better cutting). Eventually, Hassan and his father move away, and later, Amir and his father escape the worsening conditions in Kabul to make a new life in California. The book begins with Amir being called back to his homeland and goes on to explain why he feel culpable and responsible to do so. It is a story of fathers and sons, friendship, culture, loyalty, violence, deception, war, love and adoption. It is quite a story. I felt that the first half was superior; by the second half, the scaffolding of the plot structure was showing (foreshadowing was a little too obvious). Nonetheless, overall, this is a beautiful book.
17. A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher. I loved this novel - you should read it. In 1965 in New York, a 10 year-old Enzo finds himself at the planetarium with his only surviving member of his adopted family, his 21 year-old aunt Alma. Enzo is abducted and both their lives change forever, in ways neither they, nor the reader, would ever foresee. Enzo becomes Loren and Alma becomes Mala. Loren grows up in a hotel in Las Vegas surrounded by unusual scholars (of asteroids, Atlantis, memory, and more). Mala works in libraries, for an arachnologist and then becomes a nurse serving in Vietnam, where she meets and then looses the love of her life. This too is a story about adoption, family, feuds and love, but also of the stars, navigation, Classics, spiders, vampires, and Jelly Roll Morton. It is full of rounded and amazing characters. It is really a magical web of ideas and connections, weaving together the life histories and families. I cannot reveal too much - just trust me- this one is worth picking up.
Drawing on Type by Frank Newfeld. This is a memoir of award-winning illustrator, designer, typographer and book art director Frank Newfeld. I grew up on Alligator Pie, Garbage Delight and to a lesser extend, Nicolas Knock, and Other People, with poems by Dennis Lee and pictures by Frank Newfeld. I am a huge fan of his work.** I enjoyed his memoir. He was born in Chekhoslovakia, though educated in German. His mother had the foresight to get out of Europe before the WWII began, and they moved to England. His first story is quite hilarious: his first commission and an not-unrelated loss of his virginity. He writes himself as quick to make decisions, even bad ones, to busy trying to cover up his bumbling and unerringly bad sense of direction to be anything but fearless, stubborn and argumentative. He gets out of secondary school, too young to enlist, but gets himself affiliated with the local regiment nonetheless. His mother and step-father emigrate to Canada and he joins them (not ready to be parentless at 18). He signs up to serve for Israel on a bit of a spontaneous whim. He is not very well-informed about Israel or the middle east, but lost many members of his extended family to the Holocaust. After getting himself injured he ends up as war artist. He joins a "Canadian" kibbutz, where as an artist, he has some trouble fitting in. Soon he is back in England at art school, where he decides perhaps this is not the life for him. Much to the gain of the publication industry in Canada, he returns to Toronto. The tales of his early career are quite funny. Eventually he finds his niche. He illustrates, designs, teaches art. He rose to be Vice-President of Publishing at McClelland & Stewart, head of the illustration program at SheridanCollege and Co-founder/President of the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada. This book is interesting on many fronts, not least of which is the knowledge he imparts about the book industry (and the Canadian industry and M & S in particular). It was a bit sad to read how he and Dennis Lee were a bad personality match, but the stories about Canadian cultural giants like Jack McClelland or Pierre Berton are fascinating. I enjoyed it.

*Amazing how something as anti-tradition can develop tropes and rules and its own tradition.
**Was quite horrified that , who knows more than a thing or two about illustration, does not share my opinion. ;)